bacon

My friend Ron from Lush Angeles was visiting Portland this weekend and crashed at my place. When Ron and I are in a kitchen together it’s a sure bet that things are going to get fried. After a dinner of delicious karaage, General Tso’s chicken, and fried mushrooms, we were looking at a big wok full of fry oil and wondering what to do next. The Girl Scout’s Tagalongs we’d bought that afternoon were about to meet an unexpected fate…

Inspired by the tastiness of our initial experiment, we decided to have a Girl Scout Cookie fry off the next day. Fueled only by bourbon and our love of crispy battered things, we put four different cookies to the test, frying them up and finishing them with a sprinkling of sea salt.

Consensus favorites of our tasting panel were the Do Si Do (below) and Dulce de Leche, both of which had the perfect texture for frying. Thin Mints are pretty much a waste and destroy the clarity of the oil. Tagalongs are also potentially messy, but the peanut butter inside is deliciously gooey when they’re fresh from the fryer. The ones photographed at the top of the post actually have pieces of bacon embedded in the batter, creating a dangerous combination of chocolate, bacon, and peanut butter.

Unsurprisingly there’s at least one State Fair booth that beat us to this. They also favor the Do Si Do:

The gals at the Fried What! stand on Main Street seem to come up with a new deep-fried item each year. This year, they’re cooking Girl Scout cookies in oil. A Do-si-do, aka Peanut Butter Sandwich, is dipped in batter, fried till golden brown, sprinkled with powdered sugar (and chocolate syrup if desired) and served four to an order for $3.50. They’ll be available only until the stand’s cookie supply runs out.

I mentioned we had bacon. Of course we couldn’t resist battering and frying that too.

All photos by Ron, whose blog will soon be covering Los Angeles’ emerging cocktail culture.

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